I never dreamed in my life I would see war, never in a million years. Especially a war this bad. Sure the Innies were bad, but at least they have our technology, our thinking, the same tactics that we do. So many men and women have died, lives wasted. And for what? Just to prolong humanity's existence for maybe a week longer? I don't think that we will last much longer. I'm getting so tired of sitting around, for the most part that's all that we do. The days here have grown longer and longer. Sometimes I feel like they never end. I finally saw my first combat with the Covenant today, and I really wish that I hadn't. They are ruthless, evil. Our objective was to reccover team Gamma's mission logs after we lost contact at 0300 hours. We were sent down in a moddified D77 Pelican dropship, specifically designed for our recovery op. We touched town at 0530 hours, had to hump through miles of rough terrain and battle scarred wasteland. We assumed the Covenant had gotten what they came for and left. When we got to Gamma's last known location we found a body, Corporal Miller; his body covered in plasma burns. I guess they still haven't found an armor that can match up to the Covenats' weapons systems. We ended up finding the rest of the team about half a click away. Their bodies charred from plasma, some of them hardly recognizable. We tried to find video logs, but their helmets were either as fried as their bodies or missing. We reported to command and we had our rendevous. We headed back, picked through the bodies to find anything useful when we found coporal Miller's helmet. We retrieved the log and sent the information back to our superiors. We started our long walk back to our bird when it started raining. Apparently it was a good enough cover for a Covenent ambush party to get us. An Elite warrior jumped out from his hiding place brandishing a plasma sword, and donning bright gold armor. It gave a war cry, then grabbed commander Jaque. The commander told us to shoot, but it was too late. The Elite brought the sword up into Jaque's torse, then froced it upward, cutting him in half. We all opened fire on the golden bastard, and he seemed to dance as the bullets riddled his body, leaving gaping bullet holes for his purple blood to exit his body. We looked up in time to see a rain of green orbs, discharged plasma from the grunts above. We disperced, taking out the grunts with almost perfect unison. We all rushed to our fallen commander's lifeless body. We grabbed his log and double timed it out of there. There was no need to retrieve his body, it would have only slowed us down. at 0615 hours we made it back to our bird, dusted off, and returned to our frigate. I've spent the last hours in the simulator and in the library, studying the Covenant. The ambush was quite common amongst other maneuvers. Jaque's memorial/funeral is tomorrow, if we don't have another recovery mission to do. We go on standby tomorrow at 0600. And our new commander is coming from HIGHCOM, odd. Maybe there are bigger things in store for our recovery team. Hopefully we can win this war, Reach has fallen, the outer colonies have all been glassed, and I believe Earth will fall. But that's just me. This war is a pointless fight, and I am growing to miss the days back home. Life was so simple back then, school, girlfriends and friends. God! My birthday is in two days! I can't believe I'm going to be 20! It's been two years since I shipped out for basic! Life moves by so fast when you're sitting in space waiting to do recover ops. But I need my rest, and I need to prepare for tomorrow. Weapons prep, armor cleaning and prep, and I have to go with private Saunders later to help with our pelican. Damn pilots are always worrying about their birds. I kind of wish I could've been a pilot. Life would most likely be so much better. But anyway, I really do need my rest. Until my next log, Lines over and out.